i still have a few monumental posts ahead of me, i fear. and this won't be one of them.
i just wanted to reflect on a few things:
there's no such thing as global warming. no such thing. i mean, it's not like the Vltava River freezes every winter like it used to a decade ago. i mean, it's not like the hurricanes savaging the Atlantic aren't becoming stronger on average. i mean, it's not like the past three weeks in the Czech Republic haven't been t-shirt or sweatshirt weather even though as recently as five years ago it was consistently freezing at this time of year. i mean, it's not like the open-topped antique cars that ferry tourists around prague are not in the streets still when they are normally sheltered for the winter beginning in September. give me a break. no such thing.
the weather outside at this moment is getting colder. there is this intense fog that makes it impossible to see forty yards away. it's simultaneously eerie and fantastic. it makes for a wonderful mood...
i got back from a mini-paid vacation today. as i mentioned before, i took a man from the states back to find his grandfather's hometown. i'll write more about the experience when i post the photos i took...
tomorrow is a holiday in the CR. October 28th was the day that the First Republic of Czechoslovakia was established in 1918 - Czechoslovakia at the time was one of the most progressive democracies in Europe. that is, of course, until the French and English P.M.s appeased Hitler...
on top of tomorrow, i'll be participating in a hat tournament here in Praha. immediately afterwards, i'll be hopping in a car and skedaddling to Hungary for the rest of the weekend and more ultimate frisbee...
halloween is an american holiday through and through, so why do we have to export the commercialization associated with it to countries that didn't used to celebrate it (and still, really, don't celebrate it in the way it is in the states)?
i have a lot to say regarding my recent past and an important decision that was made, but that will have to wait until next week. i have photos from Budapest, Vienna and the trip with Ron Matus to put online and as i do so i will have to post my recollections of each.
happy halloween!
this will come as a surprise to some and disappoint some and some people just won't care and others will be happy: i'm staying in Prague.
many things have happened in the past two weeks. the question now is where to begin...
so, let's start with Abasar, Hungary. two weeks ago yesterday (Saturday) i was in Abasar, Hungary - about 60 km east of Budapest. i was there to pick grapes for the second year in a row. i have photos (forthcoming).
this year it was sunny and not wet, which helped make it nicer to pick grapes. this year it was warmer, which meant i didn't need to drink as much hot wine to keep warm - last year i underpacked and was always freezing, this year i overpacked and was always too hot.
like last year, i forgot my swimming trunks, so the spa on Saturday night was done wearing athletic shorts. the spa this year, however, was not nearly as fun because we were not a mixed group, which always adds to the fun and the people we went with were a little more sober in nature (and in spirit, if you know what i mean).
on Sunday (09 October) we picked more grapes in the morning. driving through Budapest on the way back to Prague, the people i came with dropped me off at frisbee friends' house (the same friends whose family owns the vineyard where we picked grapes). so, instead of returning to Prague, i stayed in Budapest. having never seen Budapest and believing that i would be returning to the states on an indefinite basis, i thought that it would be my last chance...
i'll leave the photos and stories from Budapest and Vienna for another day, however.
and i'll leave my busy life for another day, for the most part.
but first, i thought i'd tell you what i'm going to be doing for the next few days or week, really.
tomorrow, i am going to Kutna Hora and i will stay there for a few days. Kutna Hora is a town about 70 to 80 km (1 mile = 1.6 km, for those who need to know, but i'm leaving the math up to you) outside of Prague. there are a few interesting things to see in Kutna Hora, most notably a church partially made out of human bones.
but why? well, i'm going as a tourist and a tourist guide of sorts.
you see, my friend who teaches at my former school met an American. the American man, R we'll call him, wanted to get my friend and her boyfriend to accompany him to Kutna Hora, but since she has to work, she volunteered me. R is in his late 50s and his grandfather came from a small town near KH, so he wants to go and see his ancestral home. but he also wants to see the tourist sites as well.
it should be an interesting next few days. not to mention that friday is a holiday in the CR and there is an annual ultimate frisbee hat tournament (put names in a hat, make teams, play) all day. not to mention that saturday and sunday is the last regular (outdoor) tournament of the year in Kimle, Hungary. this is a tournament that was so cold two years ago that almost every player was drinking the free hot wine while they were playing, making for a slightly debauched tournament overall.
anyway, stay tuned in a week or so and i will tell you all about Budapest, Vienna and why i'll be staying in the CR. oh, and i'm going to look into being in the states from Thanksgiving all the way through the New Year, so many folks can expect a visit.
yee-hah!
since i completely restructured my business idea, i'm needing to contact some location managers, of whom i don't have any contacts, and this is likewise affecting my schedule. i want to talk to some here in prague and i'm searching, talking to friends... and i want to talk to some in LA and i'm searching, talking to friends...
hopefully, this will result in a better business model. i was a little thrown off when somebody close to me expressed doubts about my business model.. but they were basing that off the initial idea, an idea which has more or less been scrapped now.
so that means that the step at which i left off before my mini-vacation in Hungary and Austria is now on hold. the step related to website logistics, but i cannot make movements in that direction until i talk to a few location managers/scouts.
so, basically, i'm under quite a bit of stress right now because the whole thing seems tenuous. it's not. but the sensation that it is is what's stressing me out.
regardless, i just need to refocus my energy and get cracking. i have a little under two months left in Praha in which to complete this. if not, i will not only let others down, but more greatly, i will let myself down.
big changes today.
today the whole thing took a turn.
i started out today thinking about costs: how much will different things cost?
but, as per normal, my focus was led elsewhere. when i was researching costs for web design, the idea of domain names came up. and the cost of a domain name...
which led me to think about the availability of my desired domain names. so i started searching those out here.
this quickly dissolved into an exploration of some of the sites and a subsequent search in google for "movie tours". when i found a page that revealed that, as some people had speculated, there really isn't enough of a market to sustain the website as i had envisioned it.
so the idea has changed.
that was the first big change.
and then i talked to an old friend from high school who i haven't talked to since, well, high school. i talked to him online.
he's a web designer.
and he has now started the process of clueing me into what exactly it is a web designer, a web programmer and so forth do. he also told me where complications could arise in my idea. none of which seriously dissuaded me into thinking that it isn't possible.
the fundamental idea of the site is almost the same, it's just the market focus has changed. the thing now is to plan the website more extensively as per my friend's advice and, more importantly, continue talking to him because he has started my edumacation. i still have a lot of space to fill in this head of mine for things web-related.
one: i'm beginning to hold back and disable commenting abilities on older entries in an effort to stem the tide of spam-comments - i spent a lot of time this morning deleting some 200 spam comments. this isn't a problem anyway, since nobody ever posts comments to anything but the current, front page entries, anyway.
two: i'm trying to burn mp3 dvds on my external drive. but there's some perverse trick happening. first off, in order to burn on my external, i need to put a dvd-rom program disc (for the burning program) in my internal drive. (my internal cd-burner, dvd-reader drive has decided it doesn't like burning, hence my external burner.) anyway, my internal drive won't recognize the program disc and keeps spitting it out. so i can't burn any dvds. it's brilliant, really.
three: i used iTunes music store in abundance recently. i love the service, but i wish that they wouldn't distribute the music as .aac files. i understand the logic behind it, but it's still annoying. oh well.
i just spent a weekend on the northern border of the Czech Republic, in the mountain range known as the Krkonoše mountains. i was 7 kilometers away from Poland when i was in my hotel. i was even less at some points.
i went up for a yoga retreat. on friday afternoon i left my flat. i arrived at the bus stop for the last bus to Spindleruv Mlyn (the town where my hotel was) but i hadn't prebought a ticket. i ended up not being able to get on the bus. or, moreover, i had looked at the schedule and seen that two more were leaving that evening...
so i voluntarily gave up a standing position on the bus - i didn't want to stand for two and a half hours, since that was the length of the journey. i also managed to convince three other yoga people to wait for the next bus...
except that i had read the schedule wrong and there was no other bus to Spindleruv Mlyn. the later two buses only run between December and March, peak skiing season. oops.
we worked it out with the hotel, though, and took a bus as close as possible to the town and then the hotel picked us up for a small fee.
after having dinner and imbibing possibly a little too much, i ended up getting into a discussion about science versus religion - moreover, the origin of the universe.
now, i'm usually not the one who plays devil's advocate, but i ended up defending religion. and, i believe, i convinced myself of the existence of some greater power. i'm not saying being, because i don't know of that. but, unlike the person with whom i was discussing, i simply cannot accept that the universe has always been and always will be, forever stuck in a cycle of expansion and contraction. there had to be a start at some point. the only thing i can validly accept is some greater force. just to repeat, i'm not arguing in favor of the existence of a supreme being, but rather a power or force. i believe there had to be a start somewhere.
anyway, saturday i woke up with the intention of walking around Spindleruv Mlyn a bit before attending a yoga class back at the hotel. i did this. it's a charming mountain town - or rather, a charming, enormous ski resort.
after the yoga class, i decided that i wanted to go on a 5 hour hike. another girl from the yoga class accompanied for the first bit...
until my knee started hurting and i decided that maybe i should save it for sunday morning, when i wouldn't have to worry about daylight, anyway.
on the way back down the mountain, we ate a few wild blueberries, which were abundant on the mountain side. we also passed a tobogan run - or as i call them, an alpine slide. you know those sorta mini-bobsled runs made for summer days. the rider rides a tobogan (or sled, if you will) with wheels that has a single lever - push forward and the brakes release more and more, pull back and you brake. assuming there's nobody in front of you, you can bomb down the run at high speeds going nearly parallel to the ground around some turns. i got so excited by the idea of riding this thing, that we high-tailed it back to the hotel to see if anybody else wanted to go.
indeed, others did. after they finished their lunch, we went to the run and went on it multiple times. on all previous ones i had ridden (in the states), the rider walked or took a ski lift to the top of the run. on this one, however, the rider is pulled up the hill on the tobogan by a tow line, which means that in order to be perfectly upright, you have to lean forward. by the time you reach the top of the hill, your lower back is stronger because it's just had a work-out.
the tobogan run was extremely fun and i went on it 4 times.
and after that, we went back to the hotel. the others went to an indoor water park. since i hadn't brought my swimming suit, i couldn't go. so i stayed behind, read some of my book and relaxed. as i was reading in the restaurant, i saw a man come in with very blue hands - stained blue. blueberry stains.
yesterday (sunday) morning, i woke up early-ish and ate breakfast with my yoga instructor and her husband. we talked for awhile afterwards before embarking seperately on long hikes.
i started out on the hike i wanted to do the day before. this time, however, instead of walking up the mountain which i'd already mostly walked up the day before, i decided to take a ski lift to the top. it was a good idea because it saved me time and impact.
the downside of delaying my hike one day is that the weather changed completely. whereas saturday was beautiful and only partially cloudy, sunday was rain and fog and general wetness. this meant, of course, that any views to be had from the mountain tops were not possible. so i missed that chance.
however, the hike itself was relaxing and meditative, despite the fact that i moved at a clip (since i was hiking solo). i took photos, despite the weather. at the highest point of my hike was a small pool - it looked like a 3-ft deep well. it was the origin of the Elbe River. i realized that i could stick my foot in the strain that ran away from it and dam it. i could stop the flow of the Elbe. i didn't though, because it's not summer any more and i didn't want to hike the raining 10 kilometers with a wet boot...
i descended the mountain rapidly, at which point my knee began to hurt again. as did the muscles behind my knees. aahhhhh, the beauty of impact and age.
it was a great weekend overall.